French regulation working claims ARJEL president

There have been a lot of major changes happening to the world of online casino gaming both in the US and internationally. It looks like there is more news coming out of France, according to the President of regulator ARJEL at a Monaco conference. They are hoping to bring more offshore activity to their online casinos, as they’re already successfully creating a lot of offshore business. There was a conference that took place this past week that addressed many of the important issues pertaining to online gambling.

During the conference ARJEL president Jean-Francois Vilotte made the following statement: “The law to regulate online sports betting had nothing to do with tax levies. The aim was to go from illegal to legal demand without an explosion of demand. We did not want more online gaming or for this to explode. We are in line with what we anticipated before we implemented the system. For the French government, this was never tax related. There has been much parliamentary debate about this – we hardly have an explosion.”

This statement followed the release of new figures since the market regulation that happened in June. The figures showed that in the past 5 months, a huge number of people have switched over to the legal sites, rather than sticking with the illegal ones. This is positive for the company, of course!

The numbers are staggering and indicate there may be even more progress in the future. According to information released by ARJEL to La Tribune, since the regulation was enacted, more than two million player accounts have been created. This means there are about 500,000 active players that are betting fairly substantial amounts of money on racing, sports, poker and more. Horse racing had performed in line with forecasts, capturing €215m in bets, football fell short of expectations. This allowed operator PMU to capture the bulk of a market which Vilotte described as “not having the same market fragmentation as sports betting. ARJEL’s projections were around 70-80% while they only came in around 56% of sports betting in reality.

The conference had a very good turnout to discuss the future of online gambling in France. The president of Francaise de Jeux, Christophe Blanchard-Dignac, and Pari Mutuel Urbain's chief communication officer Benoit Cornu appeared on the panel alongside Denis Masseglia, president of the French Olympic Association, and Franceso Ricci Bitti of the International Tennis Federation.

Many involved believe there will be good room for growth in the future. As Christophe Blot, managing director of new entrant SAJOO, told eGaming Review yesterday: “It’s a new market, logically it would have made sense for new operators to offer different opinions to compare with those of the established physical operators.”

France looks like they’re heading down the right path; will the US be next to follow?